Release Notes for Apache Forrest 0.9
Apache Forrest is pleased to release the new version: apache-forrest-0.9
========================================================================
It can be downloaded from one of the Apache Software Foundation mirror
sites [Link: http://forrest.apache.org/mirrors.cgi].
Apache Forrest™ software is a publishing framework that transforms
input from various sources into a unified presentation in one or more
output formats. The modular and extensible plug-in architecture of
Apache Forrest is based on Apache Cocoon and the relevant industry
standards that separate presentation from content. Forrest can generate
static documents, or be used as a dynamic server, or be deployed by its
automated facility.
Requirements
============
A Java Runtime Environment (1.5 or higher) installed.
To build from source requires a Java Development Kit (1.5 or higher)
Apache Ant is not required: Forrest uses its own packaged version of
Ant in tools/ant/
Apache Cocoon is not required: Forrest uses its own packaged version.
Installing Apache Forrest
=========================
The distribution contains all Forrest resources (skins, XSLTs, images,
schemas), source code, and Forrest's own website documentation.
Copy somewhere permanent, like /usr/local/forrest or c:\forrest
(Support for installation on Windows systems into directories
containing spaces is very new, please report back on your success or
failure.)
Set FORREST_HOME environment variable to point to that top-level
directory.
Add to the system PATH environment variable, i.e. $FORREST_HOME/bin
(Unix) or %FORREST_HOME%\bin (Windows)
Getting Started
===============
See the file index.html for the quick start tips.
Issue tracking
==============
If you notice what appears to be a bug or wish to make a contribution,
please report it via the Forrest issue tracker
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/issues.html].
Feedback
========
Feedback, feature suggestions, contributions, bugs, and any other
issues can be discussed on our mailing lists
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/mail-lists.html].
Major Changes in Version 0.9
============================
** Note **
This is not a complete list of changes, just some of the more important
ones. A full list of changes in this release is available
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/changes.html].
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes to Build
----------------
* [Icon: update] Forrest minimum Java version is now Java 1.5 required
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/faq.html#requirements]
starting with Forrest-0.9-dev Committed by GM.
Changes to the Code Base
------------------------
* [Icon: fix] Suppress extra generated id when converting xdoc sections
to html. See upgrading notes
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/upgrading_09.html].
Committed by BMD.
* [Icon: update] Replaced the custom caching implementation with EHCache
in the LocationMap feature. Given how integral the LM has become, this
gives us much better overall performance, concurrent behavior, and
cache configuration options. Added a default cache config file to
main/webapp/WEB-INF/ehcache.xml Committed by TWW. See Issue FOR-1031
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1031].
* [Icon: add] Enabled use of EXSLT extensions via exslt.org stylesheets.
See example "EXSLT" in the 'forrest seed-sample' site. Committed by DC.
See Issue FOR-1176
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1176].
* [Icon: add] Enabled the filtering of output messages from Ant (see FAQ
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/faq.html#verbose-ant])
and explained how to enable coloured output (see FAQ
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/faq.html#coloured-ant]).
Committed by DC. See Issue FOR-1178
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1178].
* [Icon: add] Added a demonstration of using xml source documents without
declaring a DTD. See example "no-dtd" in the 'forrest seed-sample'
site. Committed by DC. See Issue FOR-1173
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1173].
* [Icon: add] Added the ability to use RELAXNG to validate intermediate
xml. Do 'localhost:8888/index.validation.xml' for example to validate
the "index" page. Also see how to validate intermediate
content for the whole site.
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/howto-dev.html#validate-intermediate]
Committed by DC. See Issue FOR-1172
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1172].
* [Icon: add] Added the ability for a "trademark statement" at bottom of
all pages. For configuration details, see skinconf.xml from a new
"seed" site. Committed by DC. See Issue FOR-1170
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1170].
* [Icon: fix] There was a problem with plugins libs not being copied.
Using the war task from ant fixes this issue. Committed by TS. See
Issue FOR-1074
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1074].
* [Icon: fix] Enabled the output html serializer to be configurable to
either xhtml or html. Committed by DC. See Issue FOR-1156
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1156].
* [Icon: update] Updated to Jing release
[Link: http://code.google.com/p/jing-trang/]).
As well as providing us with a
reliable RELAX NG tool, this upgrade fixes an issue on some Java 6 with
missing datatype library. Committed by DC. See Issue FOR-984
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-984].
* [Icon: update] Updated to Apache-Ant-1.7.1 release. Also jsch-0.1.28 to
jsch-0.1.39 release. Committed by DC.
* [Icon: update] Our packaged version of Apache Cocoon has been upgraded
to use the latest version of their stable 2.1 branch. This is a major
step forward for Forrest. It enables us to use a reliable and
up-to-date Cocoon. Forrest developers can again participate at Cocoon
to fix issues or develop new blocks. A number of major performance
issues are already fixed in this version. Also upgraded various other
important supporting products such as Apache Xerces and Apache Xalan,
etc. See upgrading notes
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/upgrading_09.html#cocoon].
Committed by TS. Thanks to Thorsten Scherler, David Crossley. See Issue
FOR-955 [Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-955], FOR-1017
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1017].
* [Icon: update] Promoting the output.inputModule plugin to core. Main
reason for the move is to prevent plugins dependencies since the code
has attracted different use cases solved in plugins to move it into
core. Committed by TS. See Issue FOR-1103
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1103].
* [Icon: add] Enable configuration of some Cocoon sitemap components,
e.g. output html encoding and document type declaration for html and
xhtml serializers, JTidy properties file location for html generator.
See FAQ
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/faq.html#sitemap-entities]
Committed by DC.
See Issue FOR-1071
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1071].
* [Icon: fix] There was a partially implemented xml catalog with missing
project symbols file. Only affected users of the 'seed-basic' template
site. See notes in upgrading to v0.9
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/upgrading_09.html]
Committed by DC. See Issue FOR-1075
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-1075].
* [Icon: update] Images had not been reliably reproduced in PDFs (fop
version prior to 0.94). The old way always expected a physical URI
(file or http) the new fop URIResolver in the FOP-NG block delegates to
Cocoon's SourceResolver framework, meaning images can be the result of
a pipeline. Committed by TS. See Issue FOR-635
[Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-635].
Changes to Documentation
------------------------
* [Icon: add] Added document to facilitate upgrading to v0.9
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/upgrading_09.html] Committed by DC.
* [Icon: update] Improved the FAQ about "version and properties" and
linked to the documentation of the new Properties
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/docs/properties.html] system.
Committed by DC.
* [Icon: add] Added an FAQ
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/faq.html#oldjing]
to try to
explain that Forrest does not require Java 6. Committed by DC. See
Issue FOR-984 [Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-984].
* [Icon: add] Added new documents: How to deploy documentation with the
Forrestbot "svn" workstage
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/howto-forrestbot-svn.html]
which explains how the Apache Forrest project manages their project
documentation, and How to deploy documentation with the Forrestbot
"scp" workstage
[Link: http://forrest.apache.org/howto-forrestbot-scp.html]
which explains how to
manage a personal or company website using Secure Shell SCP to deploy
the generated documents. Committed by DC.